Touch Me
by Queen of the Skye
Summary: Leia Price is a lonely, studious high school senior; Dell Hawthorne is a new Circle Daybreak member, sent to kill an evil shapeshifting spy for the worst parts of the Night World. Throw them together...and things happen. ON HIATUS.
1. Chapter 1

I started this story over a year ago, like most of my stories, and haven't updated it in over a year...like most of my stories. Well, now that is going to change. This is part of my series of revisions, edits and improvements in all the stories I consider worth the effort. This story I will leave mostly the same, except for a few tidbits with the grammar and a deepening of some plot elements. I hope you enjoy it.

* * *

"Okay, so, we're going to be doing this next project in groups," Ms. Eason said calmly. I gave my short, plump teacher a begging look—group projects were pure hell. Weeks, solid weeks, of doing all of the work while my partners did, well, nothing. _One would think that someone enrolled in AP Lit would be capable of actually working..._ "And I'm picking your groups." Pleading looks from the _rest_ of class, but I relaxed some. That meant it would be fair, at least. She read out names, groups of three or four people each, before I heard my own name called. "Leia Price, Carrie Damon, Dell Hawthorne." Carrie and Dell were both new, and I didn't know much about them.

_Except that Dell was_ hot. I found myself blushing—I had trained myself to judge people based on intellect and nothing else, but _really_. Even I could not ignore such blatant male beauty. I stood to go over to them (Dell and Carrie sat next to each other, near the back of the room), but they were already coming. Their movements were like dancing—that graceful, that elegant, like watching a cat. A predatory beauty.

"Hi, Leia!" Carrie spoke as if we were the best of friends, in a bubbly tone that solidified my half-formed first impression of her. That impression would be, of course, of a socialite teenager who dressed to kill and was nice to everyone but was dead weight on anything academic.

"Hello." I gave the halfhearted smile I usually gave such people. Graceful as a dancer she might be, but she did not have my respect enough for a full smile.

"So, does anyone know what we're actually _doing_?" Carrie demanded, but not in an impolite way. It didn't seem like she was physically capable of being impolite. Accidentally tactless, perhaps, but not impolite.

As I explained the mind-bogglingly simple assignment to her, I studied Dell. He was tall (much taller than my five-foot-four self), with dark brown hair that didn't quite cross the border to black and a delicately-structured face. But it was his eyes that caught me and held me in a tight, pleasant grip: they were blue, like mine, but they were incredibly pale, an almost glacial blue, and looking into them was like looking into an arctic lake.

Looking into a _good_ arctic lake. "Do you understand it?" I asked Carrie. I hadn't really been paying attention to what I was saying, but I'd said the same things over and over, so many times that I didn't really need to pay attention.

"Yeah. So, um, let's get started?" _That_ at least was a surprise. Maybe my first impression wasn't so accurate after all… We sorted out who was doing what without much input from Dell, who didn't say much, and the bell was about to ring when Carrie's hand accidentally brushed mine. I pulled my own away with a gasp—the tiniest amount of skin contact between me and another person was practically agony.

"Don't…do…that," I hissed, stuffing my hand in my pocket. I _knew_ it was an accident, but I suddenly wanted to be as far away from Carrie as possible, as if she carried some sort of disease. She _touched_ me…

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to," she apologized, clearly upset at having hurt someone, even on accident.

"Just…just don't touch me. I really don't like people touching me…" I was trembling, rubbing my hand over and over my jeans, trying to erase the sensation of her skin on mine. Just then the bell rang and I escaped out the door, leaving my startled partners and sprinting for my next class.

* * *

I watched her go, miserable to be left without her and not knowing _why._ Her reaction to being touched, the calm way she handled my bubbly coworker, everything about her seemed to speak to me in the deepest way. She was also, of course, beautiful: long, fine hair some indeterminate color between brown and blonde (tending slightly toward blonde) pulled into a tight ponytail that cascaded down her thin, cranberry-colored, sweater-clad shoulder. Vividly blue eyes that wouldn't meet mine unless they absolutely had to. A soft, pink mouth set in a serious expression, but I thought she might smile easily. I wanted to see her smile, fiercely I wanted to see her smile, which was a desire I couldn't explain. Perhaps I didn't hold humans in the contempt most Night People did after joining Circle Daybreak, but it was still difficult to think of them as people as a _reflex_.

Then I shook my head, trying to clear it of these thoughts. At the exact same moment Carrie chose to slap me gently across the face. "Come _on_! Some of us don't have superhuman strength to get to class, Mr.-Dell-Hawthorne-the-vampire-who-doesn't-have-weakness-or-pain-or—"

"Shut up, Carrie!" I hissed at her. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" She handed me my backpack, stuffed with books but feeling feather-light to me, and tugged me out the door. "It is beyond me why Lord Thierry chose you for this assignment," I muttered even though I already knew: Carrie was one of Circle Daybreak's most powerful witches, possibly one of the most powerful in the world.

Carrie and I walked toward our next class, she dragging me through the crowds of people and sighing exasperatedly every so often. Luckily, the class was AP World History, which, because I had lived through much of human history personally, I could ignore. This left me plenty of time to contemplate Leia Price. It was ridiculous—I'd seen her _once_, for the maybe fifteen minutes at the end of class we were given to speak with our groups, yet I was captivated. _By a human,_ the snide corner of my mind that didn't believe the Daybreakers said.

_Yes, by a human,_ I told that part of myself firmly. _Plenty of Night People have human friends and even soulmates. Even Thierry has a human soulmate._

_So?_

_Shut up._ I turned to the teacher, who was explaining the Dark Ages in such a way as to cause Carrie to mutter, audibly even, something involving the words 'Burning Times.' I shot her a look that said, _Shut up._

_No one else can hear me,_ she mouthed back.

I jerked my thumb in the direction of Adler Mostro, our project. He was an eagle shapeshifter, one of the Night World's best spies—he was excellent at locating (and speedily dispatching) humans who knew about the Night World. As well as whatever Night Person told them. His methods were brutal, and that was why Carrie and I were here—to stop him.

Carrie gave a huge, exaggerated sigh before turning to the teacher with a look of perfect virtue. _I_ returned to the puzzle of Leia Price.

"Hawthorne," the teacher called, and I twitched as if I'd been asleep. A girl giggled. "Who was king of England from 1154 to 1189?"

"Henry the second," I replied, glad it was such an easy question. I knew that king. Personally, I mean.

There was a soft, vaguely impressed sound from somewhere behind and to the side of me. A human wouldn't have heard it, but I did. I turned, slightly, and saw Leia sitting almost across the room and a bit behind me. _How did she get here?_ and, _How could I have been so blind as to not notice her before?_ were the two chief thoughts in my head. And then I noticed something: she sat directly in front of Adler Mostro.

That unnerved me. I couldn't say why.

* * *

Please review...of course, if you have already, there would be no point, not since I have left this chapter almost completely alone.


	2. Chapter 2

_He was in almost all of my classes._ And I had never noticed before—how was this possible? How was it possible that I had never before noticed this impossibly handsome person before? _Because I don't notice anyone,_ I reminded myself. And it was true; I didn't notice anyone. I hid inside my textbooks, ignored the world around me, tried not to be touched, and did my homework. I'd never gotten less than an A in my life. My parents considered a 92, a B by my school's standards, to be a failure. So did I, and because of this conviction, I hadn't had a real friend since fourth grade, had never had a boyfriend even in my high school of over 1,000 people, and though I'd skipped eighth grade and could have gone to probably any college I wanted, _I had no future._

_God, that's bleak._

_Stop thinking this way! Ten minutes with a reasonably attractive boy and your entire system for_ being _has collapsed around your ears!_

He wasn't just 'reasonably attractive,' either. And the horrible thing was that everything I'd said—well, thought—in the past five minutes had been true. The collapse of my system, I mean, because, for a moment, I might even have wanted him…to…to touch me.

_That's idiocy. Get your mind back to the teacher and back to your work._ But if I paid slightly less attention than usual, I wasn't to blame, he was.

_Dell…_

I was stowing my things in the crate on the back of my bike when someone called from their car, "Hey Leia! Do you want a ride?" It was Carrie. _What is she doing? It's not as if we're friends, we're just partners for a stupid English project._ But I went up to her anyway.

"Sorry, but I don't think my parents would like that," I said.

"Oh, that's easy," she said, tossing long, black ringlets. "I'll drop you off a few blocks from your house and they'll never know."

_That_ wasn't actually a problem. Mother and Father were always still at work when I got home. It was the whole idea of deceiving them… And a new voice, an aspect of my conscience I'd never heard before, piped up, _What does it matter? You work hard every day, and they'll never know. Besides, it's cold and windy outside. You_ deserve _a break._ So I smiled at Carrie. A real smile, unlike the one I'd given her during class. "Sure, just let me get my stuff."

Carrie helped me arrange my bike in the back of her tidy little sedan, being, I noticed, careful that our hands didn't touch. I was grateful to her for that.

But I suppose I had too much faith in the purity of her motives, because she turned to me with an almost wicked grin. "So…" she began, her dark eyes glittering, "You and Dell."

I was thunderstruck. Whatever gave her that idea? "No! I mean, we just—why do you say that?"

She giggled. "Oh, just that I have never seen Dell act like that around _anyone._"

"What, do you mean he actually _talks_ around other people?" I demanded acidly. _How dare this girl make such assumptions!_

Another part of me was thinking, _Am I really that obvious?_

Carrie's face flickered from teasing to apologetic. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you," she said contritely.

I stammered uncomfortable disclaimers about it being okay (and something, I think, about not dating), but it wasn't okay, not at all. And I didn't really want to start thinking about why it made me uncomfortable—_because it's true_—and we sat uncomfortable and silent except when I needed to give Carrie directions to my house. None too soon, we got to my street. "Just stop here," I said. "I'll walk the rest of the way."

Obediently, Carrie pulled over to the curb and helped me unload my bike and backpack, again careful that we didn't touch. "Thanks," I said, smiling at her again. "I really appreciate it."

"You are _so_ welcome, Leia," she replied sincerely. But as I got on my bike to ride the block or so to my house, something occurred to me. _How did she know the way to my house?_

* * *

My head had stopped spinning, mostly, by the time Carrie's car pulled up the driveway. We lived in the same house, but it had been decided that it would cause less suspicion if we didn't ride in the same car. We couldn't have passed as siblings—Carrie's big, dark eyes, long, midnight-colored hair and moon-pale skin compared with my own olive skin and unnaturally light eyes would have destroyed any illusions of that nature—so we were 'friends.' Who, as far as the school knew, didn't live together.

"What kept you?" I asked, though I didn't really care.

"Gave a human a ride from school," she said nonchalantly. "Leia Price, actually."

And…there went the head spinning all over again. "Why?" I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant and casual as she did.

Carrie looked at me mock-scornfully. "There are two reasons why I would give a random human a ride home from school. One, if I thought I could get information. Or two, out of the pure, innocent goodness of my heart, because she looked so sad and lonely, putting her huge, heavy backpack on a milk crate attached to the back of her bicycle."

"And which one was it?" I demanded, irritated, though I couldn't have done anything to her anyway: Carrie could have been the witch Maiden if she'd wanted to, her power was that great.

"Neither. Or both. But not the sort of information I'm _supposed_ to be getting. She doesn't date, you know." And she flashed me a white-toothed smile before waltzing into the hall.

"Why do I _care_ if she doesn't—oh, never mind!" _You are an interfering_ pest, I thought as hard as I could, and was rewarded, if you could call it that, by the sound of high, pealing laughter. _And it has nothing to do with anything we are supposed to be_ doing _here!_

Carrie came back into the room. "It doesn't have to be _all_ work, you know," she said mock-seriously. "There are dances and boys and graduation parties—"

"We're supposed to be _done_ before we graduate," I said, exasperated. "This isn't _supposed_ to be fun."

"But it can be…" she sang hauntingly before disappearing again. This time I didn't try to call her back. I slumped over the table, my backpack landing with a thump on the tile floor. This was…this was depressing: ever since we'd come here, Adler Mostro had been a model citizen. We were in all his classes, and we sometimes did surveillance with the other who were here (though we were the leaders of the whole, _useless_ expedition), and he had done _nothing_. He had done his homework. We got to watch an incredibly evil, human-hating shapeshifter behave like a human teenager.

Sans any friends whatsoever, of course. _You knew this wasn't going to be_ entertaining, I reminded myself.

_Yes, but I thought it would be dangerous. I thought I might be making up for things I've done._

_Unless you want to provoke Adler Mostro. Which would be about the same as provoking both Rashel _and_ Quinn at the same time._ I'd met both these Daybreakers, briefly, and it wasn't an experience I really wanted to repeat.

I walked to Carrie's room, knocked, and without waiting for her to open the door, called, "Carrie, I know you don't particularly care, but I'm going hunting. Don't die if you can help it." And I had almost made it out the door when her curly head popped out.

"Good hunting. And incidentally, I know something you don't know, but don't worry. You'll know soon." And then she retreated inside her bedroom again.

It was dark by five thirty in the afternoon here, which made my life that much easier. Humans were generally inside—less chance of being seen, and animals were sleepy. I found a rabbit and a squirrel, but let the squirrel go, as it appeared to be rabid.

And it was by following a deer that I made my way to a residential neighborhood. The deer escaped, but that was suddenly the least of my problems, because there was a human less than fifteen feet away.


	3. Chapter 3

I always went for a walk after dark. It was comforting, somehow, to let the cool folds of night wrap me in a gentle embrace. The only embrace I would ever get. Mother and Father didn't approve, but after much deliberation, had decided that I would fall asleep better (and I had a nine o'clock bedtime) if I had a walk. So I had as long as there was between dinner, bedtime, and the completion of my homework. Tonight, that was about three hours. I'd spent it all outside, walking far beyond our neighborhood. The park where I spent much of my free time in the summer was empty; the swimming pool was securely locked and gated but, for some reason, uncovered. Bats began to dart and swoop and I thought, irrationally, of course, _Vampires._ It was idiotic, vampires didn't exist, but… _The truth, then._

In my deepest heart, I believed in the stories, all of the old stories. All of them. Fairies and unicorns (well, they were remnants from my childhood, but _still_) and dragons and elves and magic—and vampires. Of course vampires. I'd read Dracula when I was fourteen, and it stayed with me.

Stayed with me and terrified me. I couldn't sleep in a room with a window for a week, and this at fourteen. Mother and Father had been humiliated, of course, but there was nothing they could do about it. Vampires, creatures which I knew intellectually could not, could never exist, terrified me.

That didn't stop me from loving the night, particularly nights like these when the moon was slender and fragile yet shone day-bright and turned everything it touched a pale and ethereal silver.

My walk was almost over, my time almost up, when I saw a thing that could have ruined my faith in darkness for me for the rest of eternity.

Not really a shape, at first: a shadow. A part of the darkness. And a white-tailed deer galloped out from the little stand of trees (they clustered all over the park), and that in itself was unusual, because I didn't normally see deer at night. Then something else—whatever had been chasing the deer. The streetlight here was burnt out, and the only light came from the crescent moon—a toenail moon, I remembered calling it when I was little.

Light glinted off teeth. Off fangs. Knowing it was either _the_ wisest or _the_ stupidest thing I'd ever done or would ever do, I called out, "Who's there?"

"Leia?" It was impossible, but it was Dell's voice. A nice voice, a comforting voice, but what was he doing here? "Is that you?"

"Yes." _What if he's some creepy stalker dude who uses the fact that he's so hot to—ooh, I wish I had stayed with karate!_ "What are you doing here?"

Dell stepped out of the trees, and though I couldn't see his face clearly, I could gather that he was startled. "I could ask you the same question. What are _you_ doing here?"

"I'm _walking_. I'm allowed to walk, aren't I?"

"Yes, I'm sure everyone takes merry little jaunts through the most heavily wooded parts of public parks _at night_," he said sarcastically.

"My house is only five minutes away. Incidentally, did you have fangs just a moment ago?" The last slipped out without my meaning it to. Actually, everything I'd done or said thus far had been an accident.

"Fangs?" he asked, but instead of sounding mocking or sarcastic, he sounded worried.

"Yeah. You know, vampire teeth. Long, pointy, feature prominently in Dracula?" My parents would have been ashamed at the way I was acting, behaving as if the creatures existed.

"Nope, no fangs," he said lightly, coming further into the light and baring his (mostly normal-looking) teeth in a parody of a grin. I laughed in spite of myself, and he laughed with me. "No, seriously, you should go home," he said once he'd finished laughing. "There can be some unpleasant stuff out here after dark."

"I don't think you're really that well qualified to judge," I said, "seeing as I've lived here all my life and you're new." An exasperated sigh from Dell's general direction, but I continued. "However, to humor you, since I'm sure you don't _intend_ to treat me like a small child, I'll go."

Dell was standing on my path home, and as I started along it, I brushed him, and our hands touched. It was impossible—I was wearing the cranberry turtleneck sweater that I loved because it covered almost all my skin except my fingers and the tip of my thumb, and over it a lightly insulated windbreaker—there was hardly any bare skin to touch. But my hand brushed his for a moment, just for the barest moment, it was enough.

My world was destroyed in a burst of light and color, imploded to encompass only him. Only Dell. The horror I usually felt at skin contact no longer existed, my shyness, my parents, time itself no longer existed.

I was inside his mind. _Dell, what is this? What's happening?_ And I heard him say (or rather, think, I suppose), very clearly and distinctly,

_Oh, shit._ I laughed inside our combined heads.

_This is bad?_

_It…it has the potential to be,_ he said-thought-whatever, sounding dazed, and broke the contact. I stared at him, or what I could see of him. Not knowing what I was doing (surely I would never have done this if I'd had full control of my senses), I reached up, tracing my fingers along the contours of his face. The contact sent tiny shivers through my arm, but it wasn't the disgust I usually felt at touching another person. This felt good, it felt natural.

"Dell, what was that?" I asked softly. Hearing my voice out loud was a slight shock, even after so short a connection. All inhibitions seemed to have been removed.

"I don't know…but I think I might…I have to go!" he finally blurted out, and completely disappeared. I could have cried, but I didn't; I was not a person who cried. Instead I started running for home, hoping I wasn't so late that my parents noticed.

* * *

Getting away at first seemed paramount, and not just because Leia was beginning to look more and more like a food source. I had to finish feeding, but I also had to collect my hopelessly scattered thoughts. This could be dangerous for everyone involved, for Leia and myself and possibly Carrie if it came to that.

I had heard enough about the soulmate principle from the other Daybreakers; enough, at least, to know exactly what had just happened there. And most of me wanted to be back there, to be with her; unfortunately, that 'most' included the teeth that were stretching and lengthening painfully. _What_, I thought, irritated, _wasn't that rabbit enough?_ It was a moot point, anyway, because I came across another deer. I drank it swiftly and considered trying to find Leia again, but…

Soulmates should trump homework. Soulmates should trump work, period. Soulmates should trump Carrie. Hell, soulmates should trump all of those combined!

And yet, I went home anyway. It was Thursday, we could talk tomorrow…I would try to explain. Carrie was sitting in the kitchen, but looked up with a knowing smile when she saw me. "Catch anything…interesting?" She said it in a way that could have been interpreted as genuinely interested, suggestive, irritated, or teasing. That was one of the many, many things about Carrie…

I made the connection and stared at her incredulously for a moment. "You knew—you knew that something was going to happen, didn't you!"

"Depends," she said, now careless. "What happened?"

"Leia…Leia Price from English—she was on a walk, I guess…"

"You didn't hunt her, did you?"

"No!" I said, shocked. "She's my soulmate."

Carrie looked at me. Sat back in her chair. "Wow. That adds some much-needed complication to our job, doesn't it?"

"I know."

"And it might even break Leia's straight-A's-since-fifth-grade streak," she said contemplatively. "I mean, being bound for life to a newly-reformed vampire who may _or_ may not attract the violent attention of and eagle who can at times be a human can really put a cramp in your—"

"Carrie, shut up!" Because images I would much have preferred to avoid were flooding my mind—images, not me, but of Leia, lying bleeding from the midsection, intestines spilling onto the ground. Because that was what Adler did to humans who knew about the Night World, after he knew who he was suppose to be killing. "No. That is not going to happen to Leia. Not in a million years."

"Do you think we should tell her?" Carrie asked, completely seriously. "I mean, Thierry did give us autonomy to do basically whatever we needed…" Her face was anxious and paler than usual. "Or I could put wards on her or something. If you wanted."

Wards weren't Carrie's strong point, but they were as powerful as anything else she did. "We…I…my soulmate. Not yours," I finally settled on. "But yes, I'm going to tell her."


	4. Chapter 4

Mother and Father weren't mad, which was good, because I couldn't have explained my lateness to save my life. _Sorry, Mother, but I met a boy wandering through the park like I do… I didn't realize it was so late, Father, there was this person who made the world explode…_ Instead I climbed the steps to my room and sat on my bed in a daze. Everything…the pale blue walls, the ordinary, cream-colored carpet, the tidy desk…seemed changed. My cozy room seemed different—lonelier. I couldn't describe or identify the feeling, just the absence of something vitally important that hadn't been missing half an hour ago. Dell.

Normally falling asleep was not an issue; surviving each day surrounded by people usually sapped all my limited energy. But tonight, tired though I was, sleep wouldn't come. The sense of _lack_ was so strong—I would have cried, but couldn't cry, would have run, but my feet wouldn't go anywhere but to the window, which I opened. The slight breeze blew my childish, long white nightgown around my ankles, and I felt (foolishly) like some sort of medieval princess.

"Leia." It was Mother, standing in my now-open doorway. "Do you realize that it's almost ten? You have school tomorrow, you should be in bed."

"Yes, Mother," I said obediently, and she watched while I walked slowly away from the window and sat on my bed. She turned to go, paused, half held out her arms to me. Then her face crumpled and she did go.

Next morning, as always, I got up early, selected breakfast from the myriad selection of grainy, organic, flavorless health cereals—Mother was sitting at the table with a cup of black coffee and the newspaper, she nodded hello but didn't say anything. Clearly last night (and by the standards of my family, last night had been _big_) had been forgotten. Never before had my familiar routine seemed less appealing.

English (_remember English? Life goes on_, I thought with forced cheer) was my first class, and I was still shivering from a bike ride that had turned me into a drippy-nosed icicle. The truth was that although I had my own car (it was even a semi-nice one) I wasn't allowed to use it unless absolutely necessary. So I was shivering and bearing a head-full of helmet hair when Dell came in.

How I could have been in class with him for almost half a year without noticing _him_ once was beyond me. Our eyes me—I didn't know what was going on—he looked away. Something disappeared, I could breathe again; I realized that I hadn't been breathing. As Ms. Eason prattled on about the obscure and possibly unintentional themes of _Theater of the Absurd_, I doodled. I hadn't doodled in class for an _eternity_. It felt good.

We were given the usual fifteen minutes at the end of class to 'consult with our groups,' and I wished Carrie hadn't been there. I wanted to talk to Dell. But Carrie _was_ there, very much so, and I could only steal glances at him as Carrie prattled on about I-don't-even-know-what. Finally, when she paused for breath, Dell said, "I think we should all get together at my house—we can work better there than we can here. Carrie—you know the way, right?—and I'll pick you up, Leia."

"401 Hillside Drive, but I can get there myself if it's any trouble—" _Idiot! Why did you say that?_

"No, I'll get you. It's no trouble," he said, smiling at me.

"Okay, but…my parents…" _don't let me do anything or go anywhere, ever._

"I can do parents," he said. The bell rang, and I would have stayed, but my next class was a ways away and Carrie seemed to be talking to him already, quickly and agitatedly.

The rest of the day…was weird. That was the only word, indistinct and indefinable as it was, that could have come close to describing it. Dell was in all my classes except for AP Spanish, yet his presence hummed at the edge of my mind. When we were in the same room, the presence seemed stronger, and strange though it was…it wasn't unpleasant. It was just a constant, unspoken reminder that there was someone else with me; an almost companionable feeling that I decided not to fight.

Definitely not something that made it easy to pay attention to the teacher. I stole glances at him about, oh, every thirty seconds. He seemed to be looking at me more or less constantly. But it was only uncomfortable during World History: as the teacher went on and on about the early Plantagenet kings, I could feel someone else looking at me. I snuck a glance behind me.

Adler Mostro was looking steadily at me with a terrifying, indefinable look in his golden eyes. I didn't know him—nobody seemed to. He was incredibly unfriendly, though never downright rude, to everyone. And he looked like a bad-tempered bird of prey—a prominent, hooked nose, flashing eyes under heavy brows, long, curving fingers—not ugly, but not exactly approachable.

He met my eyes with an unreadable look. I shuddered and turned away.

No kind-hearted airhead offered me a ride home today. It was windy and unpleasant, and the sense of friendly being soon morphed into _absence_. _If this is what the rest of my_ life _is going to be like, I'd just as soon take a pass._ I couldn't even think of a decent argument to the contrary: the only solution would seem to be to be with Dell every second of every day, something my parents (and the life they'd planned for me) would never allow.

They wouldn't allow me to spend _a few hours_ with him _with another person present_, apparently. "No, Leia—I said no. If you have to work, you can work here, but I've never met Dell Hawthorne or his family. You'll just have to call him and say that you can't come.

I didn't scream or cry or throw things, although I would have liked to. Instead, I went up to my room and locked myself in, the greatest rebellion I'd ever committed in my life.

* * *

I could feel her confusion and unhappiness so clearly, and it permeated me and made me miserable too. The connection was the strongest thing I'd ever felt—I wasn't a particularly strong telepath and normally it took actual effort to understand what people felt and thought. But it was as if she was shouting everything _directly into my head_, as if she wanted me to help her. _And I couldn't_. That feeling of helplessness was the most intense, and painful, sensation I'd ever known.

Had anyone ever talked about this? Had anyone ever mentioned how _painful_ it was to have a soulmate? Nobody had _ever_ said anything about it being painful. _Why does this have to be so complicated?_

_You're being whiny._

_And?_ I was sitting at the kitchen table, and Carrie was laughing at me. "The expression on your face, she giggled when I glared at her. "You look as if the universe has just thrown an enormous rotten tomato at you."

"Not a tomato, a complication. I don't _like_ complications; I don't do complications that well."

Carrie looked at me appraisingly. Then turned away. "Not _my_ complication," she said airily. "She's _your_ soulmate; you wanted to deal with whatever comes up. I'm only involved if you end up endangering your life." I didn't bother to argue.

I went hunting, subconsciously hoping (very consciously, if the truth must be told) that Leia would be walking again and that I would find her, but no such luck. And I was growing tired of hunting rabbits.

The next day I fidgeted with the various papers we had on Adler (maps of the area surrounding his house, random factoids organized in no particular way, even stories from human newspapers about attacks by vicious eagles), not really seeing any of them, to the point that Carrie suggested I just go abduct her or something. It was actually a good idea. I left.

Even if I hadn't known where she lived already, I was almost sure I would have been able to find her anyway. The connection was that strong. It was almost (but not quite) unsettling—this connection could be uncomfortable…

But all these thoughts flew directly out of my head when I reached 401 Hillside Drive (incidentally, there was no hill involved): Leia was sitting in the window, her face pensive, sad, and pressed against the glass. I rushed up to the house; Leia had materialized at the door. "Hi," she said, but she seemed heartrendingly unhappy. "My parents will be here in about fifteen seconds and they'll tell you themselves, but I can't go."

Her parents materialized over her shoulder. I could see Leia's features in both of them, but their faces were hard. "Hello," I said pleasantly (I hoped). As I spoke, I felt for their minds. It was easier, it made my life that much less complicated, but I wish it hadn't been: their minds were remarkably unpleasant places to be.

"Please leave," the man said, his voice hard. "I'm afraid we can't trust our daughter with someone we've never met before."

"Now," the woman added. Leia looked at me with helpless misery in her eyes. _I'm sorry,_ she was thinking, _I'm sorry. I wanted to go with you, would have stayed with you…_I concentrated harder on her parents minds.

_You will let Leia go with me. You don't care when she gets back. Say it._

"You can go, Leia," her father said. "Stay as long as you need to." Leia looked in shock first at her father, then at me. _What did you do to him?_ She asked me. I don't know if she knew I could hear her or not. All I said was,

"Thanks, Mr. Price. Come on, Leia." She got into the car with me and stared.

"What did you _do_ to him?" she demanded, not angrily exactly, just awed. "I've never seen my dad—or my mom—they've never done anything like that."

How to phrase this, precisely. _Well, you see, Leia, I'm a vampire, and because vampires have mind control…_ "I will tell you in ten minutes, eight if I speed." She opened her mouth to protest; I touched her hand just slightly, and sparks flickered over my skin. "Trust me," I said. Leia didn't say anything else. Just…just stared at me.

It took eight minutes to get to my (and Carrie's) house. Yes, I did speed. Leia's eyes were everywhere, flickering around like butterflies, scrutinizing everything, always returning to me. I won't pretend I wasn't flattered by that. "Okay," she said suddenly. "Let me guess. None of this has anything to do with our English project. Correct?"

I nodded. "Right."

_So tell me what it_ is _about,_ she thought, looking directly at me when she did this, and I had a feeling that she _knew_ I could hear her. I took a deep breath, then spat out the answer before I could lose my nerve.

"Leia, I'm a vampire." Her reaction was unlike any I could ever have anticipated.


	5. Chapter 5

I nodded. Slowly. A vampire. Yes, that made something vaguely related to sense, even if it was completely absurd. And I'd always believed in vampires. "So you did have fangs that night," I said speculatively. "And…were you hunting that deer?"

He looked just as dumbstruck as I probably should look right now. "Yeah." I nodded.

"Okay." My mind was working just as it usually did. "So, you live here? Lot of wood, isn't there? Or is that just a myth?"

"I'm just careful not to break anything," he said, smiling. It was a beautiful smile.

"Okay…and what about the other stuff? Garlic and crucifixes and sunlight and native earth?" Did I miss anything?

"Just stories, he said. "Garlic makes us smell bad. That's it. No native earth, crucifixes don't do anything. Sunlight weakens vampire powers, but doesn't kill us."

"Vampire powers…like what? Turning into bats or whatever?"

"No. No shapeshifting. But we can read minds, and control them if we focus. We're stronger and faster; we can see, hear and smell better than humans can. That's it."

I looked at him a bit more. Just…just for fun. Because I couldn't look at him enough during school. I touched his hand, gently. It was warm. I traced the lines of his palm, the slender blue veins that traveled up his arm. Starks like static electricity (but not so painful) flickered up my arm, and little rainbow lights jumped behind my eyes. I leaned against him, he put his arms around me. It was the most I'd ever been touched since I was ten, the most I'd been touched since it started to matter. I could have stayed there forever, almost. "What about the others?" I asked without moving. "I mean, if vampires exist, then some of the other people must exist too."

"Witches, shapeshifters, werewolves and ghouls,' he rattled off. "And there are two kinds of vampires."

"Which one are you?"

"I'm the lamia, the born vampires. They can age if they want, and have kids. Made vampires can't do that. Except I can't age anymore, because I stopped hundreds of years ago, and if I started aging now, all those years would catch up at that precise moment, and it would be very, very nasty. I would also be dead."

This was all very fine and pleasant and interesting, and I thought it might have the potential to remain thus for some time, but for the untimely arrival of Carrie. I tried to extricate myself from Dell before she saw, but found I couldn't move that well. Carrie's midnight-dark eyes lingered on me for a moment before flicking to Dell. "Did you tell her?"

I could _hear_ him think, to Carrie, not to me, _interfering twit._ "I should have mentioned this before. Carrie's a witch. She knows about everything. And that still," he continued, turning what I was sure would be a glacially cold look on Carrie, "does not give her the right to be interfering with this."

"Have you told her about Adler Mostro yet?" she asked, ignoring him.

"Go away," he sighed, but didn't say anything else. I tried to figure out what he might have to do with anything.

"Adler Mostro is the reason we're here. The reason _Dell's_ here, if that makes it more concrete for you." I blushed. "We're members of Circle Daybreak, and Adler is a Night World assassin. We have to kill him," Carrie explained to me matter-of-factly.

"I confess, I'm lost," I said. "What was that, exactly?"

Carrie shot Dell a depreciating look. "The Night World—I can't believe you didn't tell her—is tall the witches and vampires and werewolves and shapeshifters together. They're the bad guys." She held out one hand. "Daybreakers are the good guys." She held out the other hand. "We're the ones who want humans and Night people to at least stop killing each other. Oh yes, and we're trying to abort the apocalypse, as well."

_Wait, what apocalypse?_

"Dell and I are the good guys. Adler is one of the worst of the bad guys. We have to kill him."

* * *

I could feel a change in Leia. She sat up, and this time I didn't try to stop her. "Okay," she began. Her voice was cool, but I detected a thin, tense note in it. "So, this is great. But does it have anything to do with me?"

"Well—yeah, it does," I said seriously, then switched to telepathy because it was easier. _We're linked. And if—when—Adler finds out that you know about the Night World, he'll try to kill you. If you join Circle Daybreak, then basically the entire Night World will be trying to kill you. And…well, the end of the world basically affects everyone, Leia._

"Okay…but again, what does it have to do with me? I mean, I can't do anything about the end of the world, and Adler doesn't _have_ to find out, and I don't want people trying to kill me—" She stood, and looked hesitantly around the room as if trying to figure out why she was here. "I don't want to have anything to do with this. I _can't_." Her mind was spinning and blurry when I touched it, as if she was having a delayed reaction to my admission that I was a vampire. But it wasn't that, I realized as I probed deeper, that was making her like this. It was the prospect of imminent death.

"Please get out of my head," she said calmly, lightly, but becoming more and more…hysterical. "I don't want people in my head."

"Leia, it's okay," I said, standing and reaching for her—slowly, gently, as one would with a frightened animal. "Everything's okay—"

"No! No, leave me…leave me alone…" She ran out of the room, out of the house, darting faster than I'd ever thought a human could go. I ran after her, but even at vampire speed, I didn't catch up with her until she was out of the driveway and into the street.

"Leia—" I reached for her, she shrank back. _Wrong…not supposed to …please…_

"Don't." Her voice was thin and wavering. "I—DellIcan'tdothis. I kind of think I love you…really, I do. And I think I always will, but _I can't do this._ I just can't. _Please_, let me…just go." I don't know if she wanted me to let her go, or if she wanted me to go, and we stood there for a moment, faces so close I could see tears glimmering on her eyelashes, hear her light, quick breaths. Then she kissed me, very softly, very quickly, and turned and walked away.

I was numb. Numb but what I could feel was misery and…loss. Leia was—not gone, physically, of course, she wasn't there, but something changed.

"That went well," Carrie commented in an impossibly neutral voice. I couldn't' bring myself to say anything back to her. "I'm sorry," she said, more softly. I just looked at her.

Blaming myself for what happened—for her getting scared and running away—was somewhat satisfying in a thin, useless way, but I couldn't even blame myself properly. I knew from firsthand experience that humans could react very, very differently to finding out about the Night World.

It was just my dumb luck, of course, that the one human whose reaction really mattered would be one of those who freaked out, who couldn't handle it.

_This doesn't change anything,_ I told myself firmly. _We still have to get Adler Mostro, and now, I suppose, I have to protect Leia. Like I have to protect every other glass-fragile human in this sorry little town._ But of course I was wrong. Of course this changed things.

It changed them quite a lot.


	6. Chapter 6

So, this chapter wasn't _in_ the original version of the story...consider it a bonus track or something; I was merely trying to account for the time discrepancies that went along with the older chapter six. Also, I wanted to include a little more Adler Mostro... Oh no! Not that way, but I found a few false leads in earlier chapters and I wanted to lend credence to them. Enjoy!

* * *

The next week would have been torture, had it not been for the capricious whims of a lovely little virus. Possibly because of my walk/run/escape from Dell's house (through the chill of early December), I got the flu. Not bad, exactly, but bad enough that my parents decided that I should stay home from school, provided the teachers would email me my homework. So I moped around the house, did my homework, and discovered that if I tried, I could ignore the little tugging sensation that _someone who should be here isn't here._

I was grateful for that. It would make the rest of my life (without him) easier to bear if I couldn't feel his presence always. Therefore, Monday through Thursday passed uneventfully, and I was relatively fine.

And very unhappy, but of course, there wasn't anything I could do about that.

On Friday it was decided that I would return to school, but my parents, yielding for once to comfort over health, let me drive, and I enjoyed the clean warmth of my little car while outside me the sky threatened a temper tantrum. I picked a parking spot far from Carrie's little sedan and the discreet black car He used and prepared to face a changed universe.

The universe didn't seem to recognize that it had been changed. Ms. Eason still sat, plump and Shakespeare-loving, at her desk, my classmates still milled around happily, waiting for the bell to ring, and—there. There he was. I felt comforted even as a wave of something unpleasant I couldn't name—fear? Disgust? Longing?—swept over me.

He saw me too, and made as if to come over, but the bell rang and class began and I had every excuse to once more ignore him. I took careful notes on everything Ms. Eason said, gazed almost unblinkingly at the board, and did everything in my power to stop myself from looking at Dell. When class ended I all but raced out the door and was seated in my usual spot—far from him—by the time he arrived in World History.

Everything was all set to be fine. Lonely, but fine—but our teacher, Mr. Melley, put us to work in pairs…and by some horrible twist of fate, I was placed with the person I sat in front of…who happened to be Adler Mostro.

I hadn't thought much about Friday—well, I had tried very hard not to think about it—but I remembered it rather too clearly.

And definitely I remembered that Adler Mostro was as evil as it was possible to be—_I don't want to be near him_—I didn't have any choice.

He was watching me. Not speaking, though the low hum of the classroom was enough to disguise that we weren't working, just watching me. And then, "You know." His voice was cold and harsh, like the cry of a bird of prey.

"Know what?" I asked, playing dumb.

He glowered. "You know, human mouse. You know about the traitors—Hawthorne and Damon." It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about Carrie and…Dell. "You know about the Night World." What was worst was what I imagined him saying, though—_You are marked for death,_ perhaps, or _you will not survive the week._ That was what terrified me about the Night World Carrie had described—that I would die within it. Then he spoke again, and his voice was changed. It was quieter, more reasonable. "Just stay away from the witch and the vampire, and you will be fine. And forget," he put iron behind these words, "about the Night World."

I gave a weak, helpless little laugh. _Trust me, I'm trying to,_ I would have said, but of course I didn't trust him, and he would have no reason to trust me.

He turned away, and I set to my work alone.

I managed to ignore Dell, Adler Mostro, and Carrie (though I wasn't trying half so hard for her) as I went through the motions of having a normal day, and counted it a major victory.

Driving home, I was not so lucky. Halfway home, in a stretch of tree-filled nothingness, my car…died. I am not good with cars. Not by a long stretch. And it seemed like the next thing to do was cry.

So I did. I cried for a _long_ time—I don't know how long—and when I looked up again, Adler Mostro stood beside my window.

I let out a shriek and jolted backwards away from him; my fingers scrabbling frantically for the lock on my door. _Oh god let me not die let me not die don'tletmediedon'tletmedie—_

Too late. He jerked open the door and grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the car that was probably a very poor defense against him anyway. He had a knife—_why would he bother?_ I wondered, _if he can just shift?_—and he pressed it against my neck, where the big vein (the jugular, I supposed, but wasn't his style to kill you more like an eagle would?) pulsed frantically. "I'm not going to kill you," he said, but I didn't believe him quite enough to let relief flood my body. "Yet.

"What I am going to do," he continued, shifting the knife a little (I felt my fragile skin break), "is scare the shit out of Hawthorne, using you." His breath smelled like road kill. "And then I will kill you. But it will be a complete surprise—you won't be able to guess when, or where, or how…I just thought it fair to warn you, little mouse, because you _will_ be caught. This only makes the chase a bit more interesting."

With that he shoved me against my car, the knife still cutting painfully, and leapt into the air, and I saw him for the first time (though the sight gave me no pleasure, I assure you) as a golden eagle.

I had thought I was done crying. I was very, very wrong.

* * *

The cold, I decided eventually, was what was worst about this existence. The icy cold of feeling that I was alone, that I had been spurned for now and for forever—and the need to ignore it. The need to remember that Leia could only be another human who needed protection from Adler Mostro until we could destroy him and…and return to Las Vegas. To the Daybreakers, and to our next assignment from Lord Thierry.

Without her. Without her, without her, without her—the inescapable truth that echoed through my head each waking moment and pulsed through my sleep. Without her.

"Do you want a potion?" Carrie asked me Sunday night. "My sister could do better, but maybe something, oh, I don't know, memory-numbing?"

But I could only shake my head. From what I'd heard of the soulmate principle, the only thing that could alleviate the torment of being without your soulmate, once you had found them, was…being with your soulmate. Perhaps it wasn't this strong with most—certainly Ash and Mary-Lynnette could never have done it if they felt this every minute of each day—and perhaps it had something to do with how isolated Leia was from everyone else that might have had some claim on her.

_And perhaps I shouldn't think at all._ That was the only good idea I'd had. I moved like an automaton through classes without Leia—no one knew where she was, and I _would not allow_ myself to worry, or gods forbid, to try to find her—and Carrie took pity on me and let me take blood from her.

Then Friday, she returned.

Mostro got to her before me.

I watched them both with burning eyes during World History, and my fury did not dim all day. Leia would not look at me, and even Carrie seemed afraid to.

"Go home without me," I said to her during seventh period. The tone of my voice was meant to suggest no argument, but she shook her head stubbornly.

"No. It's to do with Adler Mostro, and he's as much my assignment as yours. And I have to go to make sure you don't do something stupid and kill yourself." We were speaking in whispers from the back of the classroom; my gaze alternated between Leia, who sat in the front, and Mostro, who sat in a far corner.

"I said go home, Damon, or I'll make you."

Her words came in a furious hiss. "Just you try it, Dell Hawthorne. You aren't the leader here, and this is _our_ assignment. Lord Thierry chose me for a reason, and by all the gods, if you try to stop me I will show you _exactly_ what that reason was."

I decided to drop it.

Mostro walked home—he lived in a scummy little apartment miles away—and we tailed him at a discreet distance until we came into a forested, unpopulated part of his path. I stepped into the middle of the trail, Carrie just behind me. "Adler Mostro," I called, my voice even. Ish. I had a few more reasons to want to kill him now.

He turned. And smiled. I heard Carrie draw breath beside me—what a smile. Filled with hate, and with too many teeth—"You're too late, Hawthorne," he said, his voice filled with satisfaction. "I've seen to her already."

With a single bound, fueled by my anger and hatred for him, I crossed the distance between us; my hands locked around his throat and I noticed, distantly and with slight satisfaction, that he hadn't been ready for me. "Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you right now for killing my soulmate," I hissed into his face, but when the answering voice came, it wasn't his (he probably _couldn't_ speak, come to that…)

"He didn't kill her, Dell," she said quietly, her voice nonetheless carrying through the air and even managing to penetrate my fury. "You would have noticed. If your soulmate dies—it isn't something you can ignore."

Slowly I started to see and breathe again. My fingers loosened their hold on Adler Mostro's throat, slightly. "What have you done to her?" I asked, trying not to lose control.

He smiled again. "Nothing," he said, as nonchalantly as I assumed he could while I was choking him. "Absolutely nothing. Yet." He gave a little gagging noise as I tightened my hold on his neck. With one hand I took a little silver knife out of my pocket—silver is deadly to all shapeshifters, not just to werewolves—and held it very near him.

"Go," I hissed. "Before I kill you anyway." With that I thrust him from me—I thought he would have staggered a little, or maybe even fallen, but no; he was off like a shot, and threw himself into the air, shifting rapidly into eagle form, before I could change my mind about not killing him.

I heard Carrie come up behind me; she put her hand on my shoulder. "I'm beginning to agree with you," she said. "I don't like complications."

* * *

Completely unrelated to this chapter, which is mostly filler until the interesting parts in the next one—Carrie's last name, Damon, is one I made up and means Daughter-of-the-Moon, because the moon is one of the faces of Hecate. Or of the Goddess. I'm pretty sure I've already told you that. Please review—I'll not post another chapter until someone does.


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